BRATTLEBORO — Two last-minute proposals to the fiscal year 2020 municipal budget - both seeking funding from the town's 1-percent-option meals and rooms tax - were met with two opposite outcomes at the Jan. 22 special Selectboard meeting.
The Board endorsed an idea to market the town, yet declined a new request to create a fund to support local arts and artists.
At the Jan. 8 Board meeting, representatives from the Brattleboro Area Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance presented an idea to promote the town to potential visitors.
Although they included no budget, target market, plan, organizational structure, or list of partners, they did present a price tag: they want approximately $42,000, at least for FY20.
This figure represents 10 percent of the town's take from the FY19 meals and rooms local option tax, which merchants collect on all sales of prepared foods, hotel rooms, and alcohol sales in restaurants.
The Selectboard, unready to consider the two organizations' idea at the Jan. 8 meeting, asked them to bring more details on Jan. 22.
Board members found the two-page proposal long on soft language and short on details. The public can read the document at brattleboro.org. It is included in the supporting documents for the Jan. 22 Selectboard meeting, under “Unfinished Business.”
“I was expecting to see something more detailed,” Selectboard member Shanta Lee Gander told the group. “I see the words 'marketing' and 'strategy' but without any clear plans for them,” she said, and noted, “I still want to know who your potential partners are.”
The document lists potential target markets as follows: “50 Mile Radius: to include but not limited to Western Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Northern Vermont,” and, “Drive Market: weekend visitors to New York City, Boston, Hartford, and Montreal.”
The document provided no details on target demographics within these regions.
In the “Organization and Process” section, the document states, “Consultation will include key stakeholders in the community to ensure our marketing is inclusive,” but it provided no details on which organizations and individuals the group will invite and how they will arrive at that list.
The document included no dollar figures or structures for making decisions.
Members of the group expressed confidence that their idea will work.
“This will increase revenues from the rooms and meals tax,” said DBA Executive Director Stephanie Bonin.
Bonin assured the Selectboard that the group would submit to a five-year review and would present a budget annually, with a fiscal report from the previous year.
The measures of success would depend on the strategy, said Bonin, who pointed to social media analytics, an increase in the meals and rooms tax revenue “beyond historical averages,” and an annual survey to membership businesses.
DeGray, whose spouse, Missy Galanes, owns the Vermont Shop downtown, said this initial investment would help grow the rooms-and-meals-tax revenue stream.
Otherwise, few sources exist for funding promotions, he said, noting that this idea is not just to market the town's shops, but will also feature cultural and recreational options.
“I want it to grow. I live in Brattleboro. My taxes are high,” said DeGray.
Wessel said lowering property taxes through increasing meals-and-rooms-tax revenues is a reason to support this idea.
“It's seed money,” he said.
What was not a concern, Wessel said, was details on how the group will implement their idea. He said the Chamber and DBA are “perfect [for] deciding where our dollars are going to be spent.” The Selectboard can “watch very closely” and analyze results.
“We can let them do their job,” said Wessel.
“I'm doing my job of asking questions,” said Gander.
Selectboard Vice-Chair Brandie Starr called for striking a balance between getting clear information from the group and not exerting too much control over details and specific funding decisions.
However, she was clear about expecting collaboration “with people who have a perspective” on such aspects as diversity, art, environmental concerns, outdoor recreation, restaurants.
Chamber member Cindy Delgatto said her goal was to employ the expertise of “the best marketing people,” and the group hasn't “really had a chance to dive into specifics.” She asked the Selectboard to trust the group to be fiscally responsible.
A member of the public, Iishana Artra, asked the group if they had searched for other funding sources. That question was left unanswered. Artra said it made more sense to offer this money as the winnings in a competition, open to “many groups [...] to put forth proposals to help this community.”
MacLean Gander, the spouse of Board member Shanta Lee Gander, expressed support for the premise of investing money to help the town make money.
In his work managing “a $17 million budget for 11 years,” he said that if a staff member “were to ask me for $42,000 for something, I'd expect a very detailed prospectus,” including a budget, a list of consultants, a final product, deliverables, and how the project will be evaluated.
“I don't see that here,” he said, and noted, “these things should already [have been] part of the conversation and the plan” before the group introduced it.
The requested funds constitute “a lot of money in Brattleboro,” he said.
If the money the group wants will come from surplus funds, Mac Gander said, “then there are lots of people with lots of ideas in this town about how it might be spent.”
DeGray noted that the group, like the Selectboard, will prioritize multiple tasks and community suggestions.
“One big difference is, we're regulated,” countered Selectboard member David Schoales. “We have a charter, a Town Plan, we have really clear guidelines of what we can do,” he said, and added, “there's structure in our decision-making process.”
Schoales explained that precedent has inspired some of the Board's attempts to drill down on details.
“In the past, there have been [town] grants where the work and guidance structures weren't in place, and they really got messy,” he said, and added that because “a functional group” wasn't doing the work, the town “almost had to send money back” to grant funders.
“The track record is not good without some structure around it,” Schoales said.
It took the Board two separate motions - the first one failed - to approve the group's request for funding.
The first motion, made by Schoales, would kick the group's idea down the road to Representative Town Meeting. It called for RTM to vote on the marketing idea as a separate agenda item, but did not include it as a budget line item.
DBA member Dick DeGray told Schoales he should withdraw the motion, because if the question goes to RTM as a separate item, “everyone will ask for a piece” of the funding.
Schoales refused, and he told the group his motion would allow them more time to write a more solid proposal.
The point was moot, because with Selectboard Chair - and Chamber Director - Kate O'Connor having recused herself due to conflict of interest, the motion needed three votes in the affirmative to pass. It tied, with Schoales and Selectboard member Tim Wessel voting “yea,” and Gander and Starr voting “no.”
Wessel then made another motion to include the group's idea, and their request for $42,190, in the FY20 budget. That passed 3–1, with Gander casting the lone dissenting vote.
From the beginning, Gander has expressed concerns about the idea, and questioned the group's commitment to bringing in diverse visitors and community partners, and asked them why they were unable to provide more details.
“I do not feel comfortable sending this to [Representative] Town Meeting,” Gander said. She encouraged the group to continue developing the plan.
Gander also noted that she has written numerous grants during her career. “If I walked [through] a door and said, 'I'd like to apply for a grant, and I want 40 grand, just give it to me, here's some general ideas,' they would have laughed at me,” she said, and added, “I really would expect more.”
Gander told The Commons, “How do we invite people to a place when we have not figured out the 'we?' Why should we support and maintain the surface of Brattleboro (a.k.a., telling tourists to come to our quaint town) when we can do a lot more to strengthen the people, places, and things that are the foundation of Brattleboro?”
Arts spending nixed
Lissa Weinmann, who owns the arts and performance venue 118 Elliot with her spouse, John Loggia, asked for a plan with more equity and transparency.
To the Chamber and DBA members, she said, “Since you do this every day, you could provide more specifics on this.”
As a property owner who pays the downtown assessment that already helps fund the DBA, Loggia said “the money that we pay to the DBA is supposed to be for promotion of the town.”
Weinmann said she supports the plan, but only in theory.
“My concern is, who's at the table making decisions about the use of the money?” she asked, and suggested a wider distribution of these funds.
“Let's mix it up a little bit more,” she said, such as giving “maybe 2 percent to the town arts committee.”
That idea failed, as Brenda Siegel and Arlene Distler presented just such an idea to add $8,000 to the FY20 budget to support arts and artists in town.
The Selectboard declined, with members saying they wanted more information - such as what exactly the money would fund, to whom it would go, and from what source should it come.
But little time remains in the town's budgeting process - underway since the fall and in its final stages - for Siegel and Distler to return with such answers.
As an alternative, Schoales told Siegel and Distler they could “go to Representative Town Meeting and request [funding] from them,” with a more concrete proposal.
But if the Board hasn't approved it ahead of time, that money “can't be earmarked” for any purpose, he warned.